To be successful in life one of the most fundamental skills you need is to be able to manage your time effectively. It doesn’t matter how talented you are, or how productive you can be, if you aren’t managing your time to give those talents time to shine, how much do you think you’ll accomplish?

Some ‘guy’ called Jim Rohn (have you heard of him before?) once said, ‘Don’t wish life was easier, wish you were better.

I like this quote because it sums up the very essence of self improvement and personal development. Life isn’t too hard, your job isn’t too hard, writing articles isn’t too hard, you just aren’t good enough yet. Don’t worry, that’s not as bad as it sounds!

Overall success at anything depends on managing your time to work your strengths and to give you time to manage everything else –whatever path you take: learning new skills or outsourcing it to others as examples, you still need time for it.

If you spend most of your time working on the things you aren’t so good at in order to make them as good as the things you are good at you will waste a colossal amount of time and achieve very little.

Instead, wouldn’t it make more sense to spend the majority of time on the things you are really good at, and spend less time managing the things you aren’t?

Here are 5 essential traits that help explain why effective time management is crucial:

Goal Setting – Knowing the specific goals you are aiming to achieve.

Planning – You’ve heard the quote ‘Failing to plan, is planning to fail’ – goals are all well and good, but without a plan to achieve them, they become worse than worthless.

Prioritizing – Identifying the most important tasks in your plan on a yearly, monthly, weekly, and even daily basis that will give you the biggest payoff for your time and effort.

Time Management – knowing how to successfully manage your time to ensure you get those priorities taken care of, and you reach those goals.

Knowing Your Current Limits – You’ll hear every personal development coach telling you that you have no limits, that you can achieve anything you put your mind to – and it’s true, but at the same time there is still a learning period, a time during which you can’t (yet) do everything.

Knowing what you can and can’t do helps when planning your time to maximize your strengths and minimize the time draining efforts of everything else.

Time Management is important, but Effective Time Management is crucial if you want to be successful in life, whether it is in business, or as a parent, a spouse, a friend – whatever you want out of life, you have to balance your time appropriately.

Time may be infinite, but your time is not. Learn to manage your time effectively, and get started today.